Did You Know?

Walt was the original voice of Mickey Mouse, and voiced him for about two decades.

Walt's company was originally named WED Enterprises - his initials, Walter Elias Disney. It's now known as Walt Disney Imagineering.

The word 'Imagineering' - imagination plus engineering - wasn't coined by Disney. Alcoa used it in the 1940s; Disney borrowed it and made it famous.

Main Street's upper-story windows are the park's version of movie credits - each honors a person who helped build Disneyland. Getting a window is one of the highest honors a Disney employee can receive.

Because Disneyland's Haunted Mansion had no room to build downward, its stretching room is secretly an elevator carrying you below ground. At Magic Kingdom there was space, so the walls genuinely stretch upward instead.

The Mansion is home to exactly 999 happy haunts - with room for a thousand.

There's a pet cemetery hidden on the Haunted Mansion grounds, with headstones for departed animals - including Mr. Toad.

Disneyland once ran on ticket books lettered A through E. The biggest thrills needed an 'E ticket' - which is why a great experience is still called an E-ticket ride decades after the books were discontinued in 1982.

Big Thunder Mountain's queue and set dressing include genuine antique mining equipment that Imagineers bought and hauled in.

Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln was such a leap in animatronics that audiences in 1964 debated whether a live actor was on stage.

The Main Street Electrical Parade debuted in 1972 and has been retired and revived so many times that 'farewell season' has become a running joke among fans.

Four Disney attractions premiered not at a Disney park but at the 1964 New York World's Fair, built for corporate sponsors as a way to get someone else to fund Walt's experiments.

The full-size Millennium Falcon in Galaxy's Edge is roughly 100 feet long and was built to be walked around, not just photographed.

Rise of the Resistance combines trackless ride vehicles, a simulator, a drop and live actors into one attraction, making it among the most complex ever built.

Hidden Mickeys began as a quiet rebellion. Imagineers were told to stop putting Mickey everywhere, so they started hiding him instead.

Cast members are trained never to say 'I don't know.' If they don't have the answer, they're expected to find someone who does.

Disney parks have their own vocabulary: guests not customers, cast members not employees, costumes not uniforms, and onstage versus backstage - borrowed wholesale from theater.

Trash cans in the parks are placed deliberately close together so guests are never far from one. The precise spacing has a famous origin story involving Walt and a hot dog, but the story is folklore, not record.

Scent is engineered. Devices nicknamed 'Smellitzers' pump specific smells into specific areas - vanilla near the bakery, salt air near the water, smoke near a burning scene.

Paint colors in the parks include shades chosen specifically to make backstage buildings and fences visually disappear - a go-away green.

The pavement changes texture as you move between lands, so your feet notice the transition even when your eyes don't.

Music in each land is mixed to change gradually as you walk, so you never hear two lands' soundtracks fighting.

Dole Whip became a Disney institution almost by accident: it was introduced as a tie-in at the Enchanted Tiki Room and became more famous than the attraction that sells it.

Main Street's bakery smell is not accidental - the scent is part of the design, calibrated to hit you in the first minutes of your visit.

Tokyo Disneyland isn't owned by Disney. It's owned and operated by the Oriental Land Company under license - which is why its parks often look and feel different.

Tokyo DisneySea was built with a reported budget that made it one of the most expensive theme parks ever constructed, and it's routinely ranked the most beautiful park in the world.

Disneyland Paris opened in 1992 under the name Euro Disney and had a famously rocky start, with European critics openly hostile to it.

Disneyland Paris's castle was designed to look more storybook and fantastical than its American cousins partly because Europe is full of real castles that would have outclassed a realistic one.

Hong Kong Disneyland was designed with feng shui consultation. The entrance was angled, and buildings skip the number four, considered unlucky in Cantonese.

Shanghai Disneyland's Enchanted Storybook Castle is the largest Disney castle in the world and the only one not dedicated to a single princess.